Improving the Testability of Complex SoC Designs
by Kathleen Ryan Miller and Martin Funcell
It is well known that testing System-on-Chip (SoC) designs poses technological and economic challenges. With complex SoCs targeted at cost-sensitive consumer applications, especially in the communications arena, it is important to minimize testing costs as much as possible. For this reason, Design-for-Test (DFT) is critical to the success of these chips. In fact, unique and significant test cost reductions can be achieved if DFT can be extended to exploit highly flexible tester resources.
Recent extensions in DFT techniques enable the Concurrent Test (CCT) of circuit blocks within an SoC by isolating target IP cores and ensuring that chip resources are allocated such that the cores can be tested in parallel. To effectively utilize this type of concurrent test, designers should be aware of the procedures, enhanced design automation and test system capabilities needed to implement highly tuned concurrent test.
It is well known that testing System-on-Chip (SoC) designs poses technological and economic challenges. With complex SoCs targeted at cost-sensitive consumer applications, especially in the communications arena, it is important to minimize testing costs as much as possible. For this reason, Design-for-Test (DFT) is critical to the success of these chips. In fact, unique and significant test cost reductions can be achieved if DFT can be extended to exploit highly flexible tester resources.
Recent extensions in DFT techniques enable the Concurrent Test (CCT) of circuit blocks within an SoC by isolating target IP cores and ensuring that chip resources are allocated such that the cores can be tested in parallel. To effectively utilize this type of concurrent test, designers should be aware of the procedures, enhanced design automation and test system capabilities needed to implement highly tuned concurrent test.
Related Semiconductor IP
- Zigbee Transceiver PHY
- Data Flow Architecture IP
- AMBA SPI Controller MRAM Controller
- Ethernet MAC
- Protocol Bridges
Related Articles
- Bigger Chips, More IPs, and Mounting Challenges in Addressing the Growing Complexity of SoC Design
- Getting started in structured assembly in complex SoC designs
- Streamlining SoC Integration With the Power of Automation
- The Growing Imperative Of Hardware Security Assurance In IP And SoC Design
Latest Articles
- A Low-Latency ASIC Architecture for Real-Time Line Segment Detection
- BitFair: A 12nm Bit-Serial CNN Accelerator with Learnable Early Termination and Adaptive Bit Ordering for Ultra-Low-Power XR Vision
- A Flexible Sparsity-Aware FPGA Accelerator with Column-Wise Compression for Efficient CNN Inference
- Reducing Instruction-Fetch Energy in RISC-V for Embedded AI Processing via Dynamic and Static Loop Caching
- SPARC: Automated Root-Cause Analysis of Pre-Silicon Power Side-Channel Leakage in the Processor Design Flow